Note: City allegedly founded as a nunnery by Frideswide (died 735). Famous for the 12th-century Oxford University, the country's oldest; the first college, University College, dates from 1249. Oxford was first mentioned as a town in a Saxon chronicle dated 912. Headquarters of the Royalists during the 17th-century English Civil War. A center for auto production since 1918; noted for important sytems of canals and railways.